My Very First Little Brother

It's another happy birthday time!

Mark's youngest brother, Joshua, had a birthday today.

If you know your historical turn of phrase you'll know how old he is:

Two score and eight years.

Joshua is the youngest of 7 children.

So when I married Mark I got 3 older brothers, one brother my age, a little sister, and one baby brother.

SO exciting! 

I never had a little brother growing up.

Joshua is the best of little brothers to have.

We ALL can universally agree Joshua is highly recognisable with his smile: 

His eyes disappear.

There are so many things to love about this photo.

V-necks

Tough guy looks,

Kristi's fabulous jacket

Little Joshua's squinty smile 

(for our UK friends, "squint" to us Americans means partially closed eyes)

These are The Anderson Brothers in concert.

Joshua is the 2nd from the right.

This is the weekend I first met my husband...singing in the very church where we would get married 18 months later.

The Anderson Brothers are GOOD y'all, 

I've got links to some of their songs on the bottom of my blog here.

Another one from that weekend, Joshua is so baby-faced!

Awww...Mark and I didn't even know we loved one another that day.

A few months later and I'm officially courting* Mark Anderson and 

this is at Mark's brother, Luke's, wedding.

Wow, I hope I punctuated that right, that was difficult.

Can you spot Josh?

Hint: he's wearing green kilt socks

Fun Fact: All of these boys are cousins/brothers except one, and then he pretty much is too.

*dating with the intent to marry, not any weirdo thing y'all

This is also at Luke and Mandy's wedding.

This is when Joshua and I became friends:

the day he tried on my powder blue heels.

I spent a lot of time with the Andersons despite the distance between Missouri and Dallas.

We spent a lot of time eating.

And apparently I took pictures of Joshua eating.

So you know, I'm referring to him henceforth as 

Yeshua (Hebrew for Joshua), 

Yeshi (nickname for the nickname),

Yesh (nickname for the nickname for the nickname).

Mark's nicknames for him include Snosh and Snoshy-Posh.

Roll with it.

We hung out in Wyoming the summer of 2003 and got to see Gramma.

She's celebrating her 90th birthday tomorrow!

We all hung out at my house in Colorado.

Throughout it all we continued to use my high-quality, very first digital camera:

there wasn't even a view screen on that sucker.

We drove around Oklahoma with them.

This is my sister with Yesh, he's a little brother to her too.

We took portraits in Louisiana.

 We took selfies in Louisiana.

All the while he kept growing up!

One time he did his hair like this.

And he's precious and willing to do his momma's hair.

He started to get taller and taller.

And then he was grown enough to be Mark's best man at our wedding.

Then there's a giant gap in my photos of him and he reappears at Caedmon's first birthday.

Hi Willie and Kristi!

But Yeshua's still a baby brother!

He fits well with this cray cray family.

Oh goodness, I just said cray, cray.

Sorry.

Fits, right in I tell ya.

He's also an amazing uncle to his bazillion (ok, 18) nieces and nephews:

He flew down to Houston to spend a few days with us when we lived there.

And went along to the Daddy/Daughter Ball with Mark and Nessie and Deenie.

Nessie couldn't ever say "Josh" so we all just call him Uncle Gosh now.

Uncle Gosh is a treasure.

He was the best man at Kristi and Chris' wedding last year. 

He allowed Mark and I to ride in his pocket to see the wedding via FaceTime.

See! Can you see us?!

Thanks again, Yesh.

We were very sad to not be there...

But look what handsome siblings we have!

We're thankful for technology that allows us to see our loved ones 5,000 miles away...

Although sometimes it's better to just hear them and NOT see them.

I guess it's ok because they make me laugh.

Yes, especially Yeshi.

We love you!

Happy Happy Birthday!